


Nothing Like the Ocean

by AdelaCathcart



Category: And Then There Were None (TV 2015), And Then There Were None - Christie
Genre: Body Language, Canon Compliant, Depression, F/M, Imminent Demise, Oral Sex, interruptions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:49:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27197398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdelaCathcart/pseuds/AdelaCathcart
Summary: Lombard was smooth, but not subtle. The first time he laid eyes on her he’d wanted her to feel him looking. His gaze ran up her thighs like a hand would. Like his handhad, under the table, that night when they’d all given up on survival and gotten high out of their minds. He didn’t creep under her skirt as some men would’ve done, tricking her into compliance before she could fully realize what was happening to her. He made absolutely sure she would feel it.
Relationships: Vera Claythorne/Philip Lombard
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	Nothing Like the Ocean

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vivial](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vivial/gifts).



> For Effie, who convinced me to watch it.

Lombard was smooth, but not subtle. The first time he laid eyes on her he’d wanted her to feel him looking. His gaze ran up her thighs like a hand would. Like his hand _had_ , under the table, that night when they’d all given up on survival and gotten high out of their minds. He didn’t creep under her skirt as some men would’ve done, tricking her into compliance before she could fully realize what was happening to her. He made absolutely sure she would feel it.

And that was all he’d done, at first: placed a hand on her leg as they sat side by side at their pitiful feast by candlelight. He’d half-turned to face her, as if there were a question on the tip of his tongue, and at the same moment she felt something warm and heavy pressed deliberately over the fabric of her skirt. The gesture was not in the least companionable, and there was nothing casual about it. He didn’t speak. He was waiting for a sign she’d understood.

A smile would have been appropriate, but Vera no longer smiled easily, so he had to settle for the slight convulsion of her facial muscles with which she indicated acknowledgement. Then she looked away. Lombard rolled his eyes, taking this for shyness, and Vera grabbed the hand just before it could retract. She forced it back down, as hard as she could, threading her spread fingers between his. He laughed. Blore was telling a joke. Armstrong was crying.

Vera took a swig of Bollinger from the bottle as it passed to her, and with her other hand she gathered her skirt up over her knees. Wiping her chin with her wrist, she offered the bottle to Lombard, who, rather than move his hand just when her skirt was slipping away, had to reach across his body to take it. He poured the champagne into a stray china cup with the residue of abandoned coffee at the bottom. Smiling with some secret amusement, he rose slightly and gave the bottle to Armstrong. A hilarious, incoherent conversation was in progress. Lombard’s fingertips now lay heavily on Vera’s naked skin.

She hadn’t bothered with stockings. At this point she’d hardly seen the sense of bothering with shoes. All four of them were falling to pieces. In the corner of her eye she saw Blore lick his middle finger, dip it into Marston’s powder-box which lay open on the table, then rub it under his lip. Lombard was grasping just above her knee, and pulling it firmly towards him, hooking her leg over his. Then he opened his fingers and flicked her other knee away.

He kept one eye on her face as his hand slid up her thigh. Vera supposed there was a limit to what could be accomplished under a dinner table, and yet she was worn to her last nerve, and it had been so very long since…But she mustn’t think of that. Thankfully, she _had_ bothered to put on some simple cotton drawers, and Lombard seemed content to pet her over these. His thumb ran across the embroidered bows and ribbons at the hem. She was nearly hysterical. She wondered if Armstrong would recognize the symptoms. Lombard was lighting a cigarette one-handed when he found the wet spot along her gusset. She felt him press there. He began to cough.

The other men hurried over to slap him on the back, his hand disappeared, and Vera saw him make a swift firm gesture across the front of his slacks just before they could haul him to his feet, insisting he must come and help them with the gramophone as soon as he caught his breath. They wanted to dance. It wasn’t until they’d gotten some music on, the room was spinning and Vera’s front teeth were numb and she was swaying giddy and exhausted in his arms when she felt him harden a little against her belly and realized he’d tucked his erection behind his belt. A thrill of recognition shot through her. She was much too far gone to be scandalized. In fact there was something comforting in it, she thought, as he lazily nuzzled her forehead in the semidarkness. Finally, here was a clue she knew what to do with.

They were two rats in the same trap, and no amount of talk could make their situation clearer. Every necessary conversation had been had in looks, gestures, touches. Without asking, without being asked, he came into her room and kissed her. His mouth was bitter, the same as hers—coffee and Bollinger, cigarettes, the aspirin-drip of cocaine. He breathed a sigh of relief when she locked the door behind him.

He split her blouse and rubbed his open mouth over her breasts, plucking at the nipples with his lips while he worked on the buttons of her skirt. Once it was off he lifted her by her bare hips and she crossed her legs at his back. He was grinding against her now as he mouthed her shoulder, her throat, her chin, and the rhythm of it made a muffled thumping on the door. His movements were unmistakably lascivious but he made them softly, aware that the fabric of his trousers would be rough on her bare skin. This concern was far from Vera’s mind: she wanted to be rubbed raw. She moaned and he gently placed a hand over her mouth, but she shook it off with her expression like a smile, and her fingers which had been clinging to his strong shoulders dropped low to unfasten his belt.

Philip let her stand, leaning with his hands against the door on either side of her and resting his sweaty forehead on her sternum. He was panting. His cock was beautiful in her hand, warm and red and sensitive like a sunburn. As she slipped the slacks off his slim hips he looked up into her face, lank hair falling in his dark fierce eyes, making absolutely sure of her. She slid through his arms to the floor, nuzzling her way down the fine hairs of his stomach, brushing the thin velvety skin of his cock over her lips, and then sucked him.

“ _Christ_ ,” he whispered as she grasped his rear end firmly in her hands and spun them so his back hit the door. The damp curls that brushed her nose smelled like rich dark peat, and she was still just drunk enough to get lost there. She forced him deep in her throat, kissing the head of him with the root of her tongue, caressing the rough skin of his scrotum with her full lower lip, rubbing her face into the sweetness of the earth. She could die and be buried here, she thought. He was nothing at all like the ocean.

A floorboard creaked. Something was moving in the hall. Philip had heard it too: he held his breath and cocked his head, gesturing for silence. After a moment he nodded and offered a hand to help her up. “What was that?” Vera whispered, barely breathing.

He shrugged, kissing her forehead. A protective arm wound around her waist. “I don’t know. Gone now.”

Then, very deliberately, he licked his two first fingers and rubbed them over her cunt.

She was trembling. How long since she’d been touched like that? But Hugo’s hands had never been so unequivocal, his mouth had never seemed so hungry, and Vera couldn’t remember ever having felt such desperate urgency as she did now, when Phillip positioned himself at her entrance, inviting her to finish what he’d started, which she did, with all her heart. He groaned into her throat, and she sighed in unison, and wrapped her arms around his shoulders as he lifted her again.

He was kissing her neck as he fucked her, and each welcome thrust made the door rattle more loudly than ever. His hands moved over the tensed muscles of her stomach and her legs clasping his waist, holding him close. “You’re much stronger than you look,” he murmured thoughtfully. “Actually, I’ve a feeling you’re a quick little swimmer.”

“No, I…”

“It’s all right,” he said, hefting her weight up off the door and shuffling to the bed with her in his arms. “Do you think I care? I know exactly what you are.”

“You feel _so good_ ,” she said softly as he laid her down. His movements with her were smooth and unhurried; Vera could sense the echoes of his natural grace, the lightness of step she’d felt when they danced. She was reminded of wind that makes rippling waves in the tall grass, of the sea lapping the shore. Then she kissed his mouth hard, to push that thought away.

“We’re getting out of here, Vera,” he murmured. “I’m not dying on this island. And neither are you.”

She tried to care, but the world had grown so small: there was little to care about outside of this room, less still on the island, and beyond the sea she could imagine nothing at all. A fog surrounded her, blotting out her future. There was only now: in her bed, in the dark, they were fucking, the pleasure like a single star in the vast night, and she chased it, willing it to grow until it blinded her.

“I just want to forget…” she whispered.

Philip licked the point of her jaw. “Then I’ll make you forget,” he said.

He slipped from her embrace and she began to protest, but he was planting kisses down her chest and stomach, she could feel the twitch of a smile on his lips, and then he bent his head between her legs and sucked her softly there and the words she said were, “Oh, God, yes.” He sat on the floor and drew her to him, pushing her knees wide apart with his hands to get better access. She peeked at him and saw those eyes staring intently up her body in the lamplight. She might have blushed if she’d had anything left to hide.

Suddenly the heat of his mouth was gone and his head rolled back with a sigh. “Fuck,” he groaned softly.

“No, don’t stop, don’t stop, oh God,” Vera whispered, groping for his hair to pull him back to her as she heard someone pounding on a door down the hall.

“I hope I was right about you,” he said cryptically, and then his lips were on her again, slurping her up like an oyster, and he was stroking her inside, and that was all she needed: Vera came, quietly sobbing. For a sweet moment the only death she could remember was her own happening now on his tongue. The pleasure overwhelmed her, it tossed her like a tide and then faded, and Blore was in the hall shouting, and Philip gave a brief laugh, sucked her once more, and wiped his chin.

“What?”

“You’re quick,” he explained, hurrying into his slacks. His shirt still hung open from his shoulders. Vera wrapped the sheet around herself and followed with the lamp. Blore’s banging in the hall was growing desperate. “Don’t go anywhere,” Philip added just before he opened the door.

 _How can I?_ she thought. _There is nowhere to go._


End file.
